Photo courtesy of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau
W-4: Gulf of Mexico Imaging Challenge Part II: FWI, WEMVA, Workflows, &...
Thursday, 26 September 1:30 - 5:00 pm
Organizers: Dimitri Bevc, Joe Stefani , Christof Stork E-mail Contact: dimitri.bevc@chevron.com Through the support of the SEG Research Committee
The 2012 post-SEG Gulf of Mexico Imaging Challenge Workshop produced interesting insights and dialogue about the capabilities and limitations of FWI and WEMVA in salt dominated environments, with many participants wanting to continue with the challenge, and many attendees wanting to further participate. This 2013 Workshop will continue the blind GOM synthetic FWI exercise, using the same synthetic data. We may release more information for the participants, and are open to suggestions for what we should release (please get in touch if you want to participate and have suggestions for what additional information you would like; e.g. top salt picks, well information, etc.). Participants are encouraged to present their results, and all participants are asked to submit their results for anonymous aggregation and presentation by the organizers, who will present these anonymous results plotted to the same scale and format for comparison, with some analysis.
Last year, 20 datasets were distributed to Universities, National Labs, Contractors, Oil Co’s. There were 10 submissions for the anonymous showing, and 4 of those participants chose to present their results. The synthetic data can be downloaded here.
This exercise focuses on a 2D synthetic rather than 3D, to accelerate the process, to keep computational costs down, and to enable broader participation. The 2D synthetic data are generated with fully-elastic propagation and attenuation. The model includes complex supersalt, salt, intra-salt, and sub-salt complexities representative of the deep water GOM; challenging, but no tricks, and nothing you wouldn’t find in the Gulf of Mexico. The workshop will benefit both researchers and practitioners by providing a venue to demonstrate velocity/FWI/WEMVA capabilities, discuss the benefits and areas of application of the methods, and share experiences to build future capability and explore areas of new application. Attendees can expect to get an overview of cutting-edge velocity inversion, including an assessment of current capability, and a picture of what can be expected from these methods in the GOM and similar environments, and where these methods might be most applicable. In addition, researchers will be able to calibrate their own efforts, and gain insights into the challenges of velocity model building and imaging in complex salt environments.
